He could not hide his astonishment.
“I’m still more flattered. May I ask you as a result of what enquiry—”
“As a result of no enquiry,” she said quickly. “But when a lady sees a man come bursting into her compartment at the last minute, without as much as a suit-case, she owes it to herself to observe. You cut two or three pages of your magazine with one of your visiting cards. I read that card and I remembered a recent interview in which Ralph de Limézy gave an account of his last expedition. It’s quite simple.”
“Quite simple,” he agreed. “But one must have wonderful eyes to—”
“My eyes are excellent,” she said quickly,
“But they have never left your box of chocolates. And you’re already at the eighteenth chocolate,” he said.
“I have no need to look to see, nor to think to guess,” she retorted. [[24]]
“To guess what?”
“To guess that your real name is not Ralph de Limézy,” she said coolly. “If it were, the initials at the bottom of your hat would not be an H. and a V.… Always supposing that you are not wearing a friend’s hat.”
Ralph began to lose patience. It annoyed him that in any duel he chanced to be fighting his adversary should constantly get the better of him.